Hey Andy, this time about forums

I want to create a separate bbpress forum install for private and hidden groups. I’d like all public groups to share the same bbpress install. I was thinking that I could modify the buddypress to bbpress_live interface to swap the backend params such as bbpress install url and admin user/pass before bbpress_live got them. I haven’t looked yet at the code to see what is involved.

As I was thinking about this, I realized that both bbpress installs would share the same user base. This means that any user in bbpress install ‘a’ would have the same role in bbpress install ‘b’. This is not good. The bbpress ‘capabilities’ are stored in wp_usermeta if bbpress and mu share the same user table.

This is not good. No, not good at all. Same user can’t have the same capabilities in both installs. No, not good.

Are you and Sam talking about bp/bbpress forum integration and what is needed in this area? Privacy issues?

I have people with money waiting for answers to this. All I can tell them now is:

“It’s not possible to have a private/hidden group and carry on private conversations through the bp forums/groups. There’s no reason to bother thinking about bp as a solution to your social networking needs. Take your money and spend it elsewhere.”

No not good. I can create a locked down non-bp involved forum solution for them but that’s not what I want to do.

Another alternative instead of separating WPMU & bbpress capabilities: you can assign specific user meta for each users. Say, the meta value is an array containing all forum ID that specific user belongs to. Of course you need to write some hack to the bbPress side as well. That way you can share both public & private forums in a single bbpress install.

Why does mu care what my bb_capabilities are? Why does mu know about them at all? It’s obvious they are on the mu side of the fence and for some reason they have to be but why?

My role in bbpress should be represented in bbpress. I guess it is. The meta data just happens to be in a mu table. I don’t have a user table in bbpress when integrated with mu.

My role on blog ‘a’ has nothing to do with my role on blog ‘b’. Why can’t we treat a bbpress install as a blog? wp_1_capabilities, bb_1_capabilities.

Just thinking out loud.

Back to your comment. Yes. That’s what I would have to do. ‘bb_capabilities’ is for single connection to mu/bbpress. Then I need code to sit between the ‘get user capabilities’ request from bbpress and the ‘deliver bbpress connection params’ bp uses to fire up bbpress_live and start talking.

I just found out that this ‘deep integration’ stuff where you load mu in your bb-config.php actually works. Well, maybe. Evidently the actions and filters in mu are gone when you do this. I have access to all sorts of bp and mu goodies now.

Gonna play. I’ll be awake for the next 2 or 3 days now. I should have access to all sorts of stuff from bp to get this forum issue out of the way.

That’s it. Well ya gotta have user integration done. Cookies and sessions no. I changed stuff around so many times I just stopped doing the session integration. It’s not important now and evidently there are still major problems when going deep and sessions, nonces, cookies.

I haven’t tried doing anything major yet. I’ve created my own little bbpressBar. Then I found this deep stuff. Gonna do it though. Some things like ‘blog authors’ wont translate to running on bbpress.

This is gonna be fun. I found two plugins that I’m gonna adapt for getting group forums running better on bbpress. hidden-forums.php and read-only-forums.php and they look like they’ll work well with what I have in mind.

I played around using get_header() and get_footer() on the bbpress side to load the mu header and footer for look-and-feel. I just dropped it. I’ve already got the forums looking and feeling kinda the way I want them.

wardeh, sorry it took so long to get back to you. Been busy. From what I gather all wpmu and bp functions are available. However none of the actions and filters on the mu side are in effect. I’m still not sure what that means. Just something I’ve read.

I don’t know if this deep integration is even what I want. I know it’s problematic at the moment. I think it’s going to take some time for sambauers and the gurus at bbpress to work out the kinks. I generate enough problems on my own. I’d like to keep the problems to *me*. I have a chance of fixing those.

I do know that xmlrpc works *now*. That’s what bp is using for the bp-forums component. Loading all of mu just to get at a few functions is kinda overkill. I think what I’m gonna do is create a couple of more xmlrpc methods on the wpmu side that will be called from bbpress. Such as:

‘get_all_group_forums’ – gets all bp groups that have forums and the forum id so that read-only-forums and hidden-forums can be automagicly configured. My plan is to configure all public group forums read-only and private and hidden groups hidden-forums.

‘get_all_group_members’ – Foreach group with forums get the members of that group and automagicly configure an override for each group member in that forum.

So from the bbpress side to configure read-only and hidden-forums, we get all the groups that have forums and then all the members of those groups and make the two bbpress plugins work with that info. Should be enough.

Using xmlrpc is better than loading all of wpmu just to do those two things. Especially since this deep integration is still flaky.

xmlrpc has added benefits. It’s way cooler. My forums don’t have to reside on the same server as my bp/wpmu install. I keep hearing rumblings, rumorings and hintings about xmlrpc. It’s kinda like sleeping and lurking. Getting ready for something. Comments by wpmu gurus about xmlrpc privately, Andy relying on it for forums. Something’s brewing.